Initially, managing storage capacity of disk was an easy task. The computer professionals got bigger disk drives if more storage was required. Soon when it was realized that there is increase in data storage, the computer experts attached additional disk drives for extra data storage. Soon, computer professionals understood that it became time-consuming and hard procedure to recover the reserved data. Thus, to manage this situation, the computer experts developed RAID, network attached storage and storage area networks. But even then, it became immensely hard to manage and arrange thousands of disk drives.
At this point the experts felt the need of Storage Virtualization. Storage Virtualization acts as a link between the storage system and servers by putting a new layer of software as well as/or hardware between the two. If the data was stored in any disk drive or partitions and sub-systems, it became easier for the applications to get the data. This also helped the administrators to know, manage and provide the dispersed storage just like a sole, united resource. Also there was increased availability due to Storage Virtualization since the applications did not have resource restriction which thus protected it from any sort of disturbances. Storage Virtualization even improves the storage capacity significantly and that too mechanically, thereby decreasing manual stipulation. These can be updated instantly without disturbing the functionality of the applications, and this reduced the downtime.
Technology: Storage Virtualization performs as a basic interface between the storage and servers since it is a intermediary layer. From the server end, the virtualization is regarded to be single storage devices and the storage device considers the Virtualization to be a single server. Therefore, this helps to categorize the storage systems convininetly and even devices from many sources in layers of storage.
It is possible for the user to exchange the tape or disk drives conveniently and this happens due to the fact that the applications and servers are protected from any change to storage device by the layer . At the storage virtualization layer, the data copying services are even proficiently handled. Thus, this implies that the data recovery can be easily done by virtualization system at the time of disasters. As the data can be shifted at users will, the data that is not used often or any obsolete data can be shifted to inexpensive storage devices.
The storage virtualization can planned in three ways:
- Host Based: The traditional device drivers maintain the physical drives while the software that is above the device driver interrupts I/O commands, checks the metadata and diverts I/O.
- Storage Device based: Here the storage virtualization is in-built in storage fabric. In this type of arrangement, the system offers repitition and rearrangement services through several controllers.
- Network based: Here the storage virtualization is arranged to form a network based device. This arrangement generally uses Fiber Channel Networks connected as a SAN.
The computer experts consider all three set-ups to work efficiently. But, the Virtualization endorses cross-vendor storage operation, aiding you to organize in many vendor sources. However, you are held in particular source by majority of arrangements.
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